Bio

The StarLord in a nutshell:

A freelance consultant working in the fields of information technology, media, and music. In my spare time I enjoy zymurgy, classic car restoration, and dabble in the creative arts, using a mix of traditional and digital tools. For my main job I do Technical Support.

As a blogger I love to write about the fantastic places I have visited, often taking snapshots or videos to share my experiences with those who would live vicariously through them.

You may find some of my artwork around the net, and most of it is licensed creative commons, non-commercial share-alike. I encourage people to make derivative works as long as they credit the source.

This site isn’t my only means of bread and butter, so I believe in open sharing and collaboration, much of it can be downloaded and shared in that spirit.

Life is precious and short, so I believe we shall spend our time here enjoying it and treating others as well (if not better) than we treat ourselves, making a contribution to the world around us, and leaving the places we have traveled a better place than we discovered them.

Television Bio:

Christopher ‘StarLord’ is an award-winning journalist currently producing and editing a show for British automobile enthusiasts (primarily, Minis) which centers around Northern California and Arizona events, syndicated locally, and uploaded across the Internet via Vimeo, YouTube, and Apple’s iTunes.

A wealth of broadcast teleproduction skills gained through work on earlier productions ‘Street Talk’, ‘Reel Life’ (aka ‘Film Trip’), and numerous other San Francisco Bay Area cable programs. Bragging rights include the ‘Most Valuable Person of the Year’ award in 1993 by Pacifica Community Television, as well a Bay Area Cable Excellence (BACE) and Western Access Video Excellence (WAVE) awards.

For a time, Christopher hosted a call-in variety game show, ‘Anything Goes’ based on the popular ‘Jeffs Best’, and was a featured artist on Patty Jo Roth’s Songwriter’s Soundstage (Music Innovations/Visions special) and Sandy’s Sketchbook live-on-tape painting techniques show.

Additional media appearances are listed below, though in retrospect, the majority of work done is behind the scenes, directing, technical directing, editing, filming, designing sets, setting up lighting, or managing talent, that sort of bother.

Musical Bio:

As I mentioned in the About page, I will go into more detail about my musical history here… StarLord’s childhood musical career began in the late 1960’s/ early 1970’s; his first “real” instrument was a Thomas spinet organ, with lessons… this continued for about ten years, when he picked up vocal & guitar training in the mid 1980’s. His first gig (other than church) was as lead guitarist for glam-rock band ‘God’s Grace (or GG)’ which he and some high-school mates formed. The success was short-lived, church didn’t like heavy metal 80s hairbands, regardless of focus or content.

Near the end of the 80’s I went solo into the underground techno/electronica mod/tracker scene. In the 90’s I worked on backdrop music for several cable and broadcast TV shows, along with producing an Ambient project with the “drone collective” collaborative group.

You can find and stream some of this music online, though most of it is posted here as well and free to download, though I’d sell you collected albumn if you so desire and need them on media (USB key, CD, DVD, digital download, whatever).

On the mass-produced front, you were once able to buy CD’s direct from mp3.com until it went under and got bought out by Cnet, now it is a completely different site and I’ve pulled my albums from it.

You can however find me on some of the SDF compilation CD’s over at freeshell.org, and purchase one of my late 1990’s CD’s produced by JSP STUDIO WEST, called “Dance Compilation” , available direct from jspusa.com website. Some of these earlier CDs were also sold by San Francisco Bay Area record stores Amoeba and Rasputin Records, though they are now out-of-print.

So, if you’d like a physical CD or what not of my music, you can do one of two things – you can contact me via the contact page, or you can go to the music directories elsewhere on this site, download the mp3 or wma tracks directly, and burn your own CD…

For commercial use of my songs, that is possible too, just need to contact me so that I can reply officially to your request, thus avoiding any legal entanglements you would otherwise run into using it without my direct permission 😉

News bytes:

1999 featured “User In Focus” on the MED SoundStudio website (UK), also part of the euro mod-tracker scene and ‘Pootertoonz’ community.

1993 and earlier featured in Pacifica Tribune, San Mateo County Times, KPIX5, KNTV11, PCT Radio 8, and other SF/SJ Bay-Area appearances.

Please email if interested in doing a write-up or promo.

Gear:

From the 80’s to early 2000’s, StarLord’s repertoire included a Korg DW-8000, Emu 8000, Alesis MIDIverbII, Mac, Commodore/Amiga and PC computers, and LOTS of samples! His software of choice was Sonic Foundry’s ACID, SoundForge, and RBF’s MED SoundStudio the PC.

On the Mac I used iLife (Garage Band) and open source unix programs like Audacity. This website was once coded by hand with a text editor on my shell account, but now powered by WordPress which suits my needs just fine.

I had a Korg Karma keyboard for the longest time, though had to get rid of it when moving from Canada to USA as I didn’t have the space 🙁 Someday maybe I’ll pick another one up off ebay or craigslist or a nice donor or some such.

My Not-so-vital Statistics next (sensitive people may want to turn away at this point)

You may hear my tracks as background in the following cable networks: Food Network, Fine Living, The Travel Channel, TLC, and other channels owned or operated by the same entities 😉 I’ve heard my stuff played on BlueMars, SomaFM, and all over the internet, you may hear it in the background of some folks’ YouTube videos or the more mellow stuff used in meditation, massage, or what not.

If it isn’t obvious by now, there are pages on this site broken down by published and unpublished works, and on those pages are downloadable or clickable links to the tracks I’ve posted here. Hope you enjoy them!

MetaverseAs a side hobby (along with the music, blogging, and TV production) I create virtual worlds using the OpenSimulator and Linden Labs’ Second Life platform. My skills are in building (3D modeling with a Maya-like interface), texturing, terrains, custom avatars, and some scripting/animation (mostly using lsl scripts, including media and web interactivity). As fate may find it I am one of the few people with Mac OS X experience where the Metaverse (or Virtual Worlds, Virtual Reality) servers are concerned. Though I primarily use Windows now, I’ve poked at Linux too.

LocationI was born and raised across California, the military brat of a seasoned CIA operative working under the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps (my father), until 2009 when I migrated to Alberta, Canada, and resided with my wife Rhonda. Around 2011 we lived in Mexico for a bit then in 2012 returned to the bay area for a tech job. After surviving several layoffs my number finally came up in May of 2015, the company I worked for had to let me go along with most of the executive staff and, well, ok, lots of people. Sad day. I had just bought a house in the West valley of Arizona, and had been living there (working remote) since the start of the year, and still do to this day.

Social Networks

I have accounts on linkedin, twitter, Google + and facebook, though normally keep the personal stuff private. Whenever I post here on the website, the post generally ends up in one or all of those sites.

Contact?

I get too much spam, both in email, phone, and snail-mail. Thus, if you have any comments or questions, please feel free to write me via the contact page on this website, it will go to my email directly, and I will get back to you soonest! 🙂